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Hailing from Oxford, four-piece Glass Animals formed in 2010 and their second album, How to Be a Human Being, is up for the Mercury Prize tomorrow night. A kaleidoscope of synths, R'n'B grooves and fuzzy indie-rock riffs, it's made up of 11 tracks, each one a vignette focusing on a character that frontman Dave Bayley created from hundreds of strangers' anecdotes on tour.

Bayley, who studied neuroscience at King's College, London, met his fellow bandmates at school, having moved from Texas when he was 13. Below, he and guitarist/keyboardist Drew MacFarlane discuss the Mercury Prize shortlist, their heartbreaking song Agnes – allegedly about the suicide of one of Bayley's friends – and how the serial killer Son of Sam influenced their latest record.

On the Mercury Prize shortlist

"It's a good list, there's some good stuff on it. Sampha's wicked," says MacFarlane.

"I like Kate Tempest," says Bayley. "It's a cool record – it just makes sense for now, doesn't it?

On Ed Sheeran being shortlisted

"I’m not going to slag him off because it’s amazing what he’s done," says Bayley. "But I don’t think it’s a full record, is it? It doesn’t feel like an album. It feels like a couple of slamming singles."

On their heartbreaking hit Agnes

"I never really talk about who it’s about, but it’s definitely the most honest song on the album," says Bayley. "A lot of the songs are highly fictionalised and there’s autobiography in them for sure, but it’s blended with other things. And then, Agnes is just so far in the other direction. We nearly didn’t release it because I worry about being very personal. The response, though, has been amazing. We get letters upon letters upon letters at shows and it’s heartbreaking every time and heart-warming at the same time."

"It took us a while to figure out how to do Agnes live," adds MacFarlane. "I think that something about it did catch people in a slightly different way. And maybe that's to do with the voice of the song, because it’s the only song that actually feels like it's in the voice of Dave, rather than a character."

Joe Seaward, Dave Bayley and Edmund Irwin-Singer of Glass Animals perform on day of two of Reading FestivalCredit:
Burak Cingi

On attitudes to mental health

"There’s obviously a huge stigma attached to mental health in general still," says Bayley. "You can see it everywhere, even down to the way that people are treated on the NHS, and the funding that mental health gets in the NHS. It’s bottom of the list."

On how serial killer Son of Sam was a grisly inspiration for their track Youth

"Our chauffeur in New York had been telling us these stories about various places in the city because he’s been living there for 50 years," recalls Bayley. He told us how he used to love this girl called Loretta. He finally plucked up the courage to ask her out and she said 'yes'. So he organised a double date with his best friend and his best friend’s girlfriend, and this girl with whom he was obsessed. They got a bit stoned and went to a club and danced.

"Afterwards," Bayley continues, "they came back to the car. He was in the back with the girl he was obsessed with. And his mate and his mate's girlfriend were in the front; they started making out. He was then, like, 'It’s my chance. I’m going to kiss this love of my life”. He was so happy and then there’s this knock on the window and everyone looks over and it’s a man with a gun. He shoots the two people in the front seat and then points the gun at the people in the back and pulls the trigger and it just clicked. He’d run out of bullets. Then he runs away. Basically, the man with the gun was Son of Sam, who was notorious for killing young lovers.

Drew MacFarlane and Dave Bayley perform at Coachella

"The story ended up influencing me," Bayley adds. "I tried to put myself in the shoes of these people and what it must feel like to go from that kind of euphoria to the world reversing itself in an instant. So I combined this survivor's story with a couple of other stories I’d heard. And that weird juxtaposition of happiness and extreme sadness ended up fuelling Youth on the record."

On performing live

"I get nervous," says Bayley. "When I first started in music, I was freaking out. We’d never been on stage before and our first show at the Jericho Tavern [in Oxford]... we were s---."

On how they can't afford London

"I just Airbnb next to the studio when I come back from touring," says Bayley.

Guitarist and keyboardist Drew MacFarlane

On the reality of being in a band

"It’s become very difficult to be a band financially because the money’s split," says Bayley. "If you’re a solo artist it’s very different. And it’s about that person’s brand a lot of the time. So, I think from a kind of marketing perspective, it’s probably quite hard to be a band. I do know managers who just won’t work with bands actually because they say it’s too difficult and there's not enough money in it, and there’s certainly an element of risk with a band. But I personally think that it pays off: you end up with a much more complex beast. Like, all my favourite artists are bands. I love Radiohead, I love The Strokes, I love Can. I love Talking Heads."

Frontman Dave Bayley

On the culture shock of moving from America to Oxford

"I hated it at first," says Bayley. "Oxford’s a weird place to move to from America because it’s so different. "The main thing is no matter what country you’re in, if you have an accent that is different to the normal accent, people will enjoy imitating you. I was a Texan boy. So when I turned up on the first day of school in Oxford, everyone was like, 'Hmm'. Someone threw a knife at me."

On what they'll do if they win the Mercury Prize

"Have pasta," says MacFarlane. "Maybe a steak."

"I’d be very chuffed, obviously," says Bayley. "It would be very exciting. I would probably buy some flowers for my mum. Maybe put some carpets in her house. She gets very cold feet."